It is Friday night in midtown Manhattan, and a group of firefighters, wearing Engine 21 crests on their shirts and dress caps, is gathered at the front of a bar on East 51st Street.

They are talking and laughing, a little emotionally spent. This day, Sept. 11, is always trying. Behind them, over the bar, televisions are displaying the first game in the AL East showdown between the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays. None of them is paying it much mind at all.

When Josh Donaldson rips a Luis Severino pitch over the fence to give Toronto a quick 2-0 lead, one of the Engine 21 guys notices the action and gives out a hoot. “Look at this,” he says. “These (expletive) guys.”

When someone from Toronto introduces himself, the group of them is all smiles and welcomes. They don’t mind seeing the Blue Jays good again. Better than the Red Sox.

When it is suggested that New York, on the whole, doesn’t seem particularly into this whole pennant race thing, there are shrugs. No one expected the Yankees to be any good this year. Not many think they are, in fact, any good. It’s as though there’s something just a little off about this edition of the team. They are the Yankees, sure, but not, you know, the Yankees.

“You know who’s fun to watch?” one of them says. “The Mets.”

“Shut up with that,” comes a response.

As the Blue Jays stormed their way into their biggest series in 22 years, with record interest not just in Toronto but in great swaths of Canada, it was striking to spend the week leading up to the series in New York, where the Yankees’ march to the post-season – despite Toronto’s heady surge past them, they are still in a wildcard position – has been greeted not with excitement, but indifference.

It speaks to how hilariously divergent the fortunes of these two franchises have been that one of the fan bases is rabidly soaking up every pitch, and the other would like you to wake them when they get to the league championship series.

On Saturday morning, the Yankees Clubhouse, the official team store on East 59th,

hard by Bloomingdale’s, is quiet. Which makes kind of sense: when the bars are open until 4 a.m., you don’t expect a lot of customers to burst through the doors in the early hours.

But the shop’s wares also show why this team hasn’t yet caught New York’s fancy. The first four racks inside its doors hold different jerseys with Derek Jeter’s No. 2 on the back. There’s a whole section devoted to the recently retired captain. The secondmost visible jersey is Andy Pettitte’s No. 46. He’s been retired for two years now. There are shirts celebrating Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, and then the Hall of Famers like Ruth, Mantle and Gehrig. Hipsters can get a Thurman Munson shirt.

But you have to look pretty hard to find stuff for the 2015 Yanks. There are jerseys bearing the numbers of Masahiro Tanaka and Alex Rodriguez. And there’s a custom one with Jacoby Ellsbury’s 22, and “Mrs. Ellsbury” as the nameplate. You know, for the ladies.

A young employee confirms that the Jeter items outsell all others by some distance. Asked about current Yankees, he says people like Brett Gardner. What about A-Rod? He makes a face.

“But we still got Tex,” he says.

I note that Mark Teixeira is now out for the season.

“When did that happen?” he says.

“Last night.” “Damn,” he says. Then he asks that his name not be used, because he doesn’t want to get in trouble for not knowing that. The Yankees Clubhouse apparently has exacting standards for its salespeople.

A couple hours later, in the Bronx, it’s as though the team store has been transported to the streets outside Yankee Stadium. There are Jeter jerseys everywhere.

It’s like a cult.

But there are also marauding bands of Blue Jays jerseys all over the place. The Toronto fans had made a spectacle of themselves on Friday, chanting loud enough that they were noted by the home broadcasters with some dismay, and they were back in force for the Saturday doubleheader.

It’s not hard for out-oftowners to get tickets: while the Rogers Centre is selling out every game, there’s been about 12,000 empty seats on average in New York. The scene is a little surreal, not unlike what it looks like when the Montreal Canadiens play in Toronto, or when the Maple Leafs play anywhere else in Canada. But this is New York, suddenly shot through with loud and proud Blue Jays fans wearing jerseys, hats and usually both. It’s like the Jays have turned into the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Later that afternoon back in Manhattan, I go into a bar to catch the end of the first game. Some people are watching English soccer, some others college football. I try another, and then another. Seriously, this series is all anyone in Toronto is talking about, and in Manhattan you can’t find anyone watching it even when you are actively seeking it out.

At Foxy John’s on East 47th, which despite the name is not a gentlemen’s club, the chalkboard on the patio proclaims that it is “Showing All Sports!” The list: Mets at Braves, U.S. Open Tennis, and, of course, the MLS match between Colorado and D.C. United that everyone is talking about.

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